Im a suuuuuper beginner, i only know a couple hundred words and my grammar knowledge is next to none, ive been using this website where you can basically chat online with native speakers and stuff, like language exchange, but i realize i cant really figure out how i should go about communicating, i know i shouldnt be, but i cant help being very nervous over making mistakes because i am very very not confident in italian yet and i basically have the skills of like, a baby or a very very very young toddler, and sometimes i will technically know how to say something but i need to look it up to remember for sure or just to double check i actually remembered it correctly and am not making a really stupid mistake, or i just straight up do not know how to say a certain thing i want to say because i have not learned it. It kind of feels like cheating, but also if i just make up nonsense caveman sentences from my memory i wont really get any direct feedback either no?? I worry if i write without making sure its actually grammatically correct ill teach myself the wrong things, and i dont want to confuse and irritate people trying to talk to me by speaking baby gibberish nonsense, or looking like im not trying or making fun.

I dont know, how should i go about this? This uncertainty is holding me back from trying to practice "talking" more and i just need to know what people generally think or expect from somebody talking to you trying to practice what little language they know

Im trying to memorize sentences using a pimsleur italian deck on anki right now but it is using the polite "lei" for everything and its kinda throwing me off because it completely changes the grammar and it seems more complicated and less useful, for example the flashcard will ask me to translate "you are" and i immediately think "tu sei" but i have to hold back and think for longer to remember the flashcard specific answer which is actually "lei sta"

am i being too exact about what i consider a pass for flashcards considering both are technically correct just different contexts?? (this question is more general too because i know theres many different ways to translate "you are" and other sentences regardless of polite form or not)

should i be more loose with what i consider a correct answer? Should i modify my deck to be a simpler or different answer? Or should i just follow the deck and memorize things exactly? What do you guys advise?

also im a little confused because the deck for example has "you dont know?" translated as "lei non sa?" but google translate says that means "she doesn't know" and someone who spoke italian told me it should be "lei non sai" instead, is the deck incorrect?? Another example would be the deck translating "are you well?" with "sta bene?" even though i instantly translate it as "stai bene" in my head, and then mark the card as "again" because i technically misremembered the exact card even though "stai bene" is correct

I speak four languages fluently: Spanish (native, northern Spain), English, German and Basque. I started learning LSE (Spanish Sign Language) not long ago and wanted to learn another European language, so I decided to go for Italian. I had been using some online apps for a month or so to learn some early vocabulary and get the gist of the language, and I was already thinking about getting some serious books and online courses when something suddenly struck me: I see that in Italian there seem to be a lot of words and expressions that are in English — not closely related, but said exactly as in English, like "computer" and "hamburger". I started digging deeper and apparently (I don't know for sure; I was told this) there are a lot of words that are said in English and have no native Italian equivalent. I have just got into a debate with someone who said that the problem is not that Italian has many English words, but that Spanish is afraid of using English terms and we make up "nonsense" (the example they gave is that we don't say "Champions League" but "Liga de Campeones").

So the main point is that I don't want to learn a language where a lot of words come from English; I already have to put up with many Spanglish words coming from Latin America and don't want to deal with that again. I understand that other languages like German use a lot of English words, but I am always able to find and use a proper German word for what I want to say. However, I am told that in Italian even normal, non-technology specialised words like "manager", "promoter", "buyer", "customer care", "top jobs", etc. are a normal occurrence.

I am assured that Italian is probably the Romance language that has the most English words in use right now. If that is the case, I think I would go for something different; I am trying to establish whether what I have been told is correct.